


madly, deeply and irrevocably

by randomprose



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, contemplative!Kuroo, kuroo understands because he's such a sweetheart, tsukki is not vocal of his feelings, tsukki shows his love in other ways though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 11:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8012323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomprose/pseuds/randomprose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kuroo Tetsurou falls in love with Tsukishima Kei. It happens in increments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	madly, deeply and irrevocably

**Author's Note:**

> This can be considered as a sequel for [too much, so much](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7709941) but it can also be a stand alone. It's very general and random, just something I did to get myself writing again.
> 
> (I should probably stop giving my fics 'word-comma-word' titles and start actually thinking of titles that makes sense. Today is not that day.)

Tetsurou knew he liked Tsukishima by the end of that first training camp. He knew that “so, you can ask me all about blocking” was only half the truth for him giving his number and asking Tsukishima for his. He knew he would get so much shit for it once Bokuto realized and he knew that it will probably hurt to pine after someone that far who might not even be interested in him the same way. He knew it will be difficult – but not entirely impossible.

And, thank whatever lucky stars he had, it wasn’t at all impossible.

Because a month later, when he finally grew the balls to ask Tsukishima out – palms sweaty, heart on his throat – he said yes, and three months later, he’s still receiving good morning texts and going on weekend dates, holding hands and eating ice cream in autumn because why the fuck not.

Liking Tsukishima was easy. They banter, they make fun of each other, they hold hands and kiss and have fun. They go on dates and train for volleyball together and it was just easy.

But falling in love with Tsukishima was a different matter entirely.

It wasn’t as fast and clear as liking him. The fact that he likes Tsukishima is something of a sudden fact, something he’d accepted and constantly carry around with him. It was almost as easy as breathing, constant and never changing. Tetsurou likes Tsukishima and that is that.

Falling in love with Tsukishima was a slow gradual revelation. It happened in increments.

 

* * *

 

Tsukishima can be hard to read especially when he wants to be. Sometimes, even in the best of days, Tetsurou would still need to read him in the ways he taught himself how.

Tsukishima has an unconscious habit of changing his vocal inflections when he’s hiding something. He hides it well and tends to get drown in his usually monotone and the words he utters that are a prelude to a storm. One wouldn’t even notice it if they weren’t listening closely and were only paying attention to the vicious things that comes out of Tsukishima’s mouth.

“…and really, Kuroo-san, I’ll ask for help when I need it but you’re being presumptuous if you think—“

Tetsurou lets him finish before he smiles and says, “Tsukki, what’s wrong?”

The ‘don’t’ in “I don’t know what you mean” is said a little too forcefully and Tsukishima sighs at the look Tetsurou sends him through the computer screen. He fixes his glasses and sighs again before caving in.

Other times, Tetsurou would catch the almost breathless excitement as Tsukishima talks a little more, a little faster than he usually does.

A new bakeshop just opened by the station, he went today and their strawberry shortcake was so good. A small theater in Sendai will be having a screening of all the Jurassic movies, Tsukishima wonders if Tetsurou would like to come and watch. His brother brought home the figurine he’d been eyeing in the store since last month and now his collection is complete. Yamaguchi’s serves are getting better and today he made a really fast jump serve even Kageyama was shocked.

He would smile even as Tsukishima will stop talking because he suddenly realized he’s been talking too much, too fast than normal, fixes his glasses – a habit he does when he’s nervous or embarrassed, Tetsurou found out – before resuming his normal voice.

And Tetsurou wonders how it’s possible to like someone so much you start to pick up on their every little habit.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, when he’s relaxed enough, Tetsurou would catch Tsukishima in a middle of a drawing.

It’s nothing fancy, just simple sketches of nature and animals, something like a rough draft, but they’re beautiful all the same. The first time Tetsurou brought it up, it startled Tsukishima so much he made a long crooked line across the page and nearly ripped the paper in half. Tsukishima has a talent for drawing but he doesn’t like people knowing about it.

So, Tetsurou has taken to just watching whenever he catches him sketching. He watches the effortless way his pencil moves against the paper, the way his long fingers are curled in the pencil, the flick of his wrist, and the easy back and forth strokes when he’s shading. Sometimes they’re very detailed, clean and precise down to the minutest of details; other times it is all messy lines and rough edges, freeform.

He wonders if he’s the only one who knows about it, wonders if there are others he’s allowed to know of this secret talent of his. Tetsurou finds himself strangely possessive of this knowledge for reasons he could not understand.

When he’s finished, Tsukishima doesn’t collect his drawings. If it’s not attached to a notebook or anything he needs to rip it out of, he leaves them behind to be thrown away. Tetsurou takes them and keeps them to himself. He now has a growing pile of landscapes and small animal sketches tacked on his wall.

And when Tsukishima comes over and asks about them, Tetsurou just shrugs and says, “I like them.”

 

* * *

 

Yaku hates it whenever they’re on the court with Karasuno.

It doesn’t matter if they’re on the other side of the net or the other side of the court, Tetsurou would always lose focus of Nekoma’s game because his eyes will be glued to Tsukishima one way of another.

Yaku would yell at him and his teammates will jeer but he can’t help it – especially when Tsukishima has his game face on.

Tsukishima has a default serious face, gaze level and unsmiling. It’s different when he’s on the court.

Tetsurou has been on the receiving end of a lot of intense stares from a lot of different people. But Tsukishima’s eyes when he’s focusing on a game are more than intense, they’re burning. Golden gaze aflame with the desire to win yet calm and collected with the confidence that they will.

It’s nice to look at when he’s not on the receiving end of it but when he is – oh, when he is.

Tetsurou misses a block and Yaku yells at him again. He catches Tsukishima throw him a smirk from the other side of the net and Tetsurou is so, so fucked.

 

* * *

  

They say you find out about a person’s true self when they are under pressure or distress, when they are at their worst and most unlovable.

Tuskishima is prickly and sarcastic by default but he is also tolerant and polite; he is more social and kinder on his good days. But on his bad days, Tsukishima is unresponsive at best and difficult at his worst and Tetsurou learns that liking someone is different from loving them.

Tsukishima is not easy to love – not always anyway. On the days that he is, Tetsurou revels in the feeling of soft touches, barely there smiles, and rare open laughters. Tsukishima lets himself go, opens up more, lets himself be affectionate and shows it. Tetsurou dives in it head first and greedily soaks it all up.

And on the times that he isn’t, it is when Tetsurou tries harder. He stretches his patience more, talks less and listens more. He gives him space and doesn’t bombard him with messages, lets him brood by himself and stow in whatever it is that’s got him in his shit mood until he thinks it’s enough and it’s time to pull him out of it. Often, Tsukishima will draw it out and Tetsurou would have to drag him out of it kicking and screaming while trying his best to not let Tsukishima’s cutting words get to him because he knows he’ll apologize after he’s cleared his head and do everything he can to make it up to Tetsurou. It’s hard but it’s not impossible.

Sometimes Tsukishima is not easy to love but Tetsurou imagines that he isn’t too.

He can be brash and impatient. He doesn’t have a steady brain to mouth filter and tends to say things that tick people off even if he doesn’t mean to. He can be abrasive and sometimes his provocativeness gets him in the worst situations. When he gets frustrated that even venting it on volleyball isn’t enough, he tends to direct it to other things and sometimes even Tsukishima is not safe from it. He also imagines the late Skype calls and messages take a toll on both of them. It’s a struggle to be in a long distance relationship itself, but even more so with ever changing and conflicting schedules that just never match up.

But at the end of the day, when after Tetsurou has told him about his day and asks about his, Tsukishima will sigh, the tell tale sign that he has a lot to say, and it sounds like coming home.

 

* * *

 

Seasons changed, months turned into a year, and somewhere in between, ‘Kuroo-san’ becomes ‘Tetsurou.’

He’s not sure when it happened. Probably during the same time ‘Tsukki’ and ‘Tsukishima’ became ‘Kei.’  Around the time Tsukishima’s texts became longer and more frequent, their Skype calls longer, their monthly meet ups becoming weekly. Between accidental brushing of the hands became pinkies linked together like a promise became intertwined hands. Around the time they started sleeping over each other’s houses and innocent pecks on the cheeks became bolder – lips against lips, tongues against tongues, warm hands everywhere sending electricity down their spines, awkward limbs tangled together, forgetting where the other ends and the other starts – and around the first time they laid beside each other as they become one.

The prelude went something like this:

“Kei. You…you can call me Kei.”

“I already call you Kei.”

“I know. But this time…I won't tell you to stop calling me that...Tetsurou.”

Tetsurou kisses the freckles down Tsukishima’s nape and shoulders, snakes an arm over his waist and pulls him closer against him. His lips travel up to his neck and down to his shoulders again whispering ‘Kei, Kei, Kei’ with each kiss over and over like a prayer.

 

* * *

 

In the span of time they’ve been together, Tetsurou has only ever saw Tsukishima cry twice.

The first time was when Karasuno won their first nationals in over half a decade and the other – the other Tetsurou was at fault.

Or they both were. He’s not entirely sure by now.

Tetsurou doesn’t remember them ever having a fight like this. Normally, they’re of the trivial things – who forgot to take out the trash, who finished the last coffee and didn’t replace it, letting the dishes pile up, setting the washing machine wrong, forgetting to buy groceries, Tsukishima being too irritable and Tetsurou being too obnoxious.

He can’t remember what the fight was about. All he remembers now is shouting at each other – Tsukishima’s words more vicious and acrid than usual and Tetsurou, usually placating and pacifying, matching them up with his own mordant tone and caustic words. It ended with a slamming of doors – Tsukishima locking himself up in his room and Tetsurou storming out from their apartment. When he returned, the apartment is empty and Tsukishima’s keys are on the table by the door.

Living together certainly is different than they imagined it to be when they were two hundred miles apart. The thing with living together is you see each other closely, see each other’s little quirks and idiosyncrasies, every habit of theirs that inexplicably makes you tick and disagrees with your system. Sometimes it almost makes him wish they were back to the way they were – two hundred miles apart, conflicting schedules, the longing fresh and ever present, no room for arguments because they were always running on borrowed time.

Almost – but not enough to get used to not waking up and coming home to Tsukishima for more than a couple of days.

It’s been a week since the fallout and a week since he last saw Tsukishima. Tetsurou can be stubborn for a lot of things but not when it comes to him.

He drives to Yamaguchi’s apartment, the only place he knows Tsukishima will go, pushes his beat up Prius on the snowy and slippery road, cold, exhausted, hurting and longing. He was about to pull up on the complex’s driveway when he passes by the bus stop and sees a lone figure sitting on the bench. Tetsurou pulls up on the side and makes his way over.

Tsukishima is bundled up in his favorite wool coat, his overnight bag at his side, scarf half undone while his hands (which he knows are bare) are buried deep in his pockets and his headphones on his ears in lieu of earmuffs. If it were any other time, Tetsurou would’ve smiled at the picture. Tsukishima has never been too susceptible to the cold.

Tsukishima looks up at him but doesn’t say anything. Tetsurou, in his thickest coat his face half buried in his scarf and two layers of gloves, a complete opposite of the barely bundled up Tsukishima, sits beside him. A couple of ‘heys’, silence stretching for minutes with tension heavy between them, and then:

“I miss you.”

Tsukishima’s voice cracks at the end. From the weight of the tension or his words, neither is sure, but when Tetsurou turns to look at him, Tsukishima is looking away and he knows that he is crying.

A steady string of ‘shit, fuck, what the fuck’ is coming out of Tsukishima in a frustrated hiss and he watches as he takes his glasses off to violently wipe at his eyes.

Panic flashes in Tetsurou for some reason. Panic and something else. It’s a strange thing, the feeling of not wanting to see certain people cry, because seeing them cry does things to you – horrible things you can’t explain and you just want those horrible feelings to stop. Tetsurou knows what it means, has known for awhile now.

He gently coaxes Tsukishima to turn, takes his face between his hands and wipes his cheeks with his thumbs. Tetsurou swallows around the lump in his throat and the stinging at the back of his eyes at seeing Tsukishima in tears because of him. He moves closer to kiss them away because Tsukishima is still crying and Tetsurou doesn’t know what else to do.

“I’m sorry. I love you. Please don’t cry anymore.”

A mix of a strangled soft sob and a gasp comes out of Tsukishima and he stops crying long enough to register what he just said. At the back of his mind, Tetsurou is cursing a storm for letting it slip out at the most inconvenient and probably inappropriate of times but he can’t exactly say he regrets it.

“What did you just—“

“I love you. I’m so sorry but I miss you too, you have no idea. I can’t take us fighting anymore. I don’t even know what we were fighting about and I’m sorry I made you cry. I love you. I’m stupid and brash and I say shit I don’t mean and I’m sorry. I love you. So, just please—please just—“

Tetsurou is cut off by cold chapped lips. Tsukishima’s bare hands are warm against his cold face and he sighs against the kiss because _finally._ The heavy feeling in his chest disappears, the lump in his throat gone, and finally the hurting in him stops.

 

* * *

 

For someone who’s not really big on human contact, Tsukishima really likes holding hands.

When they first started dating Tetsurou would be too afraid to hold his hand. Their hands would brush together as they walk side by side, feels the tingle of something every time, and just when Tetsurou thought he couldn’t take it anymore, Tsukishima would link their pinkies together – subtle and quiet just like he is.

The first time they held hands, Tetsurou has had it with himself and just took Tsukishima’s hand in is. It wasn’t even intentional. They were going somewhere or other and Tetsurou just reached for Tsukishima and ended up grabbing his hand. Tsukishima flinched and Tetsurou stopped, belatedly asking, “Is this okay?”

For his part, Tsukishima just looks mostly startled and confused. He sends him a look that Tetsurou couldn’t quite read before nodding and giving their hands an experimental squeeze.

Later, it is Tsukishima who intertwines their fingers and Tetsurou had to restrain himself from letting out a giddy laugh.

From then on it becomes something automatic. Their hands would somehow find the other’s every time they’re together as if they’ve been doing it all this time, as if it’s the most natural thing to do.

To his utter delight, Tetsurou finds that more often than not it’s Tsukishima who reaches for his hand first. He fits their palms warm against each other’s, slips their fingers between the spaces perfectly and gives them a light squeeze.  His hand grasps Tetsurou equally firm and gentle and it’s cliché and slightly intoxicating and utterly ridiculous and he is so, so in love.

 

* * *

 

And somewhere in between these little things, Tetsurou falls in love with Tsukishima Kei.

Liking Tsukishima had been easy, it was born out of having a commonality involving volleyball and mutual attraction, shallow and fleeting and uncertain. But falling in love with Tsukishima Kei was different.

Falling in love with Tsukishima Kei was a slow gradual revelation. It happened in increments.

Tetsurou falls in love with the way he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, he falls in love with the subtle changes in expressions, the tone of his voice, depending on the circumstances and the people he’s addressing. He falls in love with his fingers, meticulously taped during trainings and matches, long and slightly crooked from volleyballs he’s managed to shut down and score for his team. Tetsurou falls in love with his honesty, the way he tells things how it is and never holds back. He falls in love with his dry humor, his wit and sarcasm and his ability to make Tetsurou laugh even if he doesn’t mean to. Tetsurou falls in love with the Tsukishima on the court; his face intense as he focuses on winning with his team, falls in love with how far he’s come from being someone who thinks volleyball is a waste of time and ‘just a club’ to the player he is now. He falls in love with Tsukishima’s rare smiles and even rarer laughs, things that makes him selfish for wanting to keep them all for himself. He falls in love with the way he leans against Tetsurou as they sit in the gym entrance before or after practice, props his chin on his shoulder and kisses the side of his jaw when he thinks no one is looking.

Tetsurou even falls in love with his insecurities, the things that makes Tsukishima question his self-worth and makes him think he’s hard to love. Tetsurou falls in love with every frustrated sigh, every anxious wringing of his fingers in self consciousness, every mumbles and whispers of uncertainty. He kisses away every bit of self-doubt, every bit of insecurity and revels in the aftermath when it is his turn to be showered with affection as a show of gratitude.

And Kuroo Tetsuroo falls in love - madly, deeply and irrevocably in love - with all of Tsukishima Kei.

He tells him this time and time again, in the mornings when they wake up and at night before they sleep. Tsukishima doesn’t say it back – hasn’t said it back – and that’s perfectly fine with him.

Because it is Tsukishima who takes Tetsurou’s hand as they are walking side by side or sitting on the train, just because. When they kiss, Tsukishima drapes his arms over his neck or grips his shoulders to pull him closer, and he is the one who chases the lingering feeling of their lips together as he pulls Tetsurou for another. Tsukishima lets him lay his head on his lap and cards his fingers through unruly hair as he listens to him rant about whatever. He makes sure there is coffee when Tetsurou is pulling an all-nighter and shares his morning cup when they’re running short of it until they can stock up again. He warms him through cold winter nights and tells him ‘I love you’ in the ways he knows how and in more ways than one.

And Tetsurou knows they’ll be alright.

 

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

“I figured you’d know by now.”

“I don’t know if you’re aware, but sometimes words and communication are essential for a healthy relationship.”

“Fine. I love you, too. Of course I do.”

“I know. Say it again?”

**Author's Note:**

> Some extra things for this fic:  
> -The scene on the bus stop with Tsukki having his overnight bag with him: he's going home (to Kuroo) because he couldn't take it anymore either. Kuroo just so happened to coincidentally met him halfway. Serendipity? Serendipity.  
> -Tsukki once drew a very detailed picture of a black cat. It is Kuroo's favorite drawing of his. He laminated it and made it into a bookmark.  
> -On winters, Kuroo _loves_ holding Tsukki's hand because it's always warm. Tsukki knows this and so he always makes sure he's holding Kuroo's hand when it's cold.
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> You can check out my other works [here](http://randomprose.tumblr.com/tagged/writing) and [here](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/1592826/proserandom)
> 
> Hit me up at [Tumblr](https://www.randomprose.tumblr.com)! I do fic prompts. :D


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